Seib & Wessel: What We’re Reading Monday

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (@JosephEStiglitz) says that as the U.S. inequality gap widens, the bonds that hold society together weaken and the 99% lose faith in a system that seems inexorably stacked against them. [New York Times]

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Government requests that Google take down politically controversial material are climbing, with Turkey and Russia among those who most frequently ask for removal of material leaders there don’t like. [Forbes]

Andrew Browne (@abrownewsj) writes that China isn’t merely becoming more assertive in international affairs, but is shedding its long-standing fear that it needs to tread carefully to avoid stirring up anti-China sentiments that could harm its economic rise. “In short,” he writes, China “is demonstrating that its patient wait to assert itself on a global stage is drawing to a close: Its moment has arrived.” [WSJ]

Despite talk of the rise of alternative energy sources, writes Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry), the reality is that “fossil fuels will continue be America’s dominant energy source for the next quarter century and beyond, while renewables, even with continued taxpayer life support, will continue to play a relatively minor role as an energy source for the U.S.” [AEI]

Former President Jimmy Carter and Robert Pastor, senior advisor to the Carter Center, write that the only way to break the stalemate in peace talks over Syria is for the United Nations and major powers to set the conditions for participation instead of allowing belligerents to set preconditions that “aim to win an unwinnable war rather than to forge an imperfect peace.” [Washington Post]

James Carroll, a former priest, describes Pope Francis‘s journey from Argentine Jesuit to what Mr. Carroll hopes will be a transformational papacy in the spirit of Pope John XXIII, and sees several of his recent gestures as supporting evidence for that. [New Yorker]

Despite Democrats’ edge with women, there are four Republican female governors (Ariz., N.M., Okla., S.C.) and only one Democrat (N.H.). Democrats and national women’s groups aim to change that in 2014 with five other high-profile female candidates (R.I., Mass., Pa., Wis., Texas). [AP]

Much-ballyhooed classes for the talented and gifted don’t provide much extra benefits, Michigan State economists find in a comparison of fifth graders who qualified with those who fell just short of the threshold. [Quartz]

“Seib & Wessel” Video

Fed Sets New Course: WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath and David Wessel explain why markets cheered the Fed’s decisions to gradually wind down its bond-buying program and vow to keep rates low for years — and where it leaves Janet Yellen, the next Fed chair.

Post-Snowden Spy World: The message from a presidential panel’s report on U.S. intelligence gathering: Spy operations have sprawled out of control. WSJ’s Siobhan Gorman explains how President Barack Obama now faces a key test in how he responds.

The Next Budget Battle: WSJ’s David Wessel says that the recent modest budget deal reveals the difficult politics of tackling entitlement spending. A possible next step: Shift the messaging to saving Social Security rather than fighting the deficit.

In September 2013 (the latest data), wages and salaries averaged $21.54 per hour worked by civilians and accounted for 69.1% of compensation. Benefits averaged $9.61 an hour and accounted for the remaining 30.9%. [BLS]

The number of checks written in the U.S. fell to 18.3 billion in 2012, less than half the number written a decade earlier; 17% of checks were deposited as an image last year versus 13% in 2010. [Fed]

The value of assets held by overseas branches of Japanese banks now exceeds 100 trillion yen ($948 billion) for the first time in 15 years. They peaked at 195 trillion yen in 1990 and fell to low of 38 trillion in 2004 as Japanese banks curtailed foreign operations to deal with bad loans at home. [Nikkei]

So far this year, nearly 1,000 bottlenose dolphins — eight times the historical average — have washed up dead along the Eastern Seaboard from New York to Florida, the vast majority victims of mobillivirus. [New York Times]

One in five residents of the European Union (21%) have never used the Internet. [Eurostat | Chart]

All of the computers dedicated to mining Bitcoin have a power about 4,500 times the capacity of the U.S. government’s mightiest supercomputer, the IBM Sequoia. [New York Times]

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Washington Wire is one of the oldest standing features in American journalism. Since the Wire launched on Sept. 20, 1940, the Journal has offered readers an informal look at the capital. Now online, the Wire provides a succession of glimpses at what’s happening behind hot stories and warnings of what to watch for in the days ahead. The Wire is led by Reid J. Epstein, with contributions from the rest of the bureau. Washington Wire now also includes Think Tank, our home for outside analysis from policy and political thinkers.